The food at Saly Papa, which took over from Tokyo Table in the shopping center at the southeast corner of Garfield and Main in the heart of downtown Alhambra, is as befuddling as its name.

To work backward, the restaurant is named for Swiss chef Saly Weil who was the head chef at the Hotel New Grand in Yokohama nearly a century ago. He combined classic Continental dishes, with Japanese touches, creating a style of food called “yoshoku” — a word that appears at numerous spots on the menu at Saly Papa, a bit like an incantation from Harry Potter.

The cooking is…not what we think of, when we think of Japanese cuisine. It’s far more Continental than Japanese — and far more old school Continental at that. Where Japanese cooking is so often perceived as light, healthy, largely fish-based, devoid of butter and cream, yoshoku is the polar opposite. Spend a moment studying the sculpted plastic models (properly called “sampuru”) of the dishes in the cabinets at the entrance — and you’ll be struck by how so many of the dishes are either deep-fried, bathed in cheese, or both.

And indeed, going through the heavily illustrated menu — lots of full color photography — you’ll be struck by how the dishes look a lot like what you might have eaten at a Swiss hotel back in the last century. Melted cheese abounds! Sauces glisten! You can feel the crispy crunch just looking at the pictures! And this is not just a culinary outlier.

When I was in Japan a few months ago, it was hard to miss the many Italian and Mexican restaurants, with large crowds digging happily into cheese and crunch and sauce. Sushi isn’t dead — but it sure does have competition in Tokyo and Kyoto.

Still, it can send your senses reeling, as you contemplate the Yoshoku Mixed Platter of a “six-ounce hamburger steak with teriyaki sauce, omelet rice with ketchup, panko fried shrimp, seafood croquette, tartar sauce, Neapolitan spaghetti and side salad” — a lot of food for $19.95, and a definite challenge to our SoCal dietary imperatives.

But it’s also a doorway into an alternative culinary reality — a mashup of two cuisines which seem as far apart from each other as is possible. And the result are dishes in which one of the two cuisines dominates the other.

The most notable of the Japanese ingredients used are the sauces — tonkatsu sauce; sauces built around ginger, and around soy; teriyaki sauce, a fair number of curries, Japanese pickle relish. Some of the pastas use mentaiko cod roe, shiso, sake and shredded nori.

You’ll find words on the menu like kombu (seaweed), and togarashi (chili pepper). One of the pizzas is topped with short ribs in a sukiyaki sauce. Another of the pizzas is made with Kewpie brand mayonnaise — a favorite in Japan. That pizza is also topped with bacon and sweet corn. Another pizza uses Japanese mushrooms — shimeji, enoki, shiitake, maitake.

Still, it’s hard not to look upon the ribeye steaks, and think…Western food. Ditto the sautéed chicken thighs, with roasted fingerling potatoes and grilled onion. Despite the teriyaki soy sauce, this is a Western dish. Despite the rice and miso soup that come with the entrees, this is Western food. Even ordered with the wasabi soy sauce, and the onion vinegar sauce, this is Western food. Though it can be very quirky Western food — as in the case of the omelette rice dish, served atop a heap of rice flavored with tomato sauce and chicken, doused in ketchup.

One of the signature dishes here is called a “doria” — a fancy name for a rice gratin, rice topped with a cheesy, buttery white sauce, baked to give it a bit of browning. The sandwiches are made with “toasted Japanese white bread” — which is certainly a surprise in a world of artisanal breads.

And if all that deep-frying and sauciness leaves you craving a salad, thank goodness there are three — sukiyaki beef and kale, grilled Caesar, and a house salad with chicken and bacon. With the salad, you could order some edamame, with sea salt, or garlic oil. It’s one of the most Japanese dishes on the menu.

Wash it down with a green tea latte — you’ll have left the West for the East at last.

Atmosphere: In the sprawling shopping mall space that was last Tokyo Table, a “yoshoku” style restaurant, specializing in Western dishes prepared with a Japanese touch. Which means the dishes lean more toward deep-fried than sushi and sashimi — which can rattle those who think of Japanese cooking as definitively light.Prices: About $25 per person

What the stars mean: Ratings range from 4 stars to zero. 4 stars is world-class (worth a trip from anywhere). 3 stars is most excellent, even exceptional (worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California). 2 stars is a good place to go for a meal (visit if you’re in the neighborhood). 1 star is a place to go if you’re hungry and it’s nearby. Zero stars is not worth writing about.